Limited space is often a significant constraint in garden and plant growing applications, especially in urban and inner-city locations. Vertical gardens have been developed as a way of facilitating the growth of ornamental and food plants along building walls, balconies, rooftops and other similar locations. Such vertical gardens can be an effective way to grow a large number of plants in limited space and transform stark building environments into areas of greenery and lush landscapes. Present vertical garden systems, however, suffer from certain disadvantages that limit them from being truly applicable to a wide range of applications.
A vertical garden is basically a framework of plants placed onto the side of a building or a wall. They can be placed indoors or outdoors and in full or partial sun environments, depending on what types of plants are grown. Present vertical gardens are available only in a few limited configurations. The most basic vertical garden consists of a series of bags or containers that hold soil, and that are attached or hung directly on a wall or suspended vertically in a frame or similar structure. Such gardens are basically soil gardens that have been oriented vertically, with plants growing vertically upward from bags or baskets of soil. Soil based vertical gardens may provide some degree of space savings, but they still rely on soil as the growth media. Consequently, they suffer from the disadvantages traditionally associated with soil, that is, they are heavy, bulky, dirty, and inefficient with regard to water use.
Another vertical garden system uses a metal frame with a waterproof backing material (e.g., Polyvinyl Chloride PVC) that is attached directly to a wall or vertical surface. A second material, such as felt or cotton is glued or otherwise attached to the PVC layer and provides a capillary structure for supporting the plants and distributing water. A variation of this type of wall garden is a system that uses particle board with an absorbent filler material that holds water in a certain width (e.g., two to three inches) of material, and which is attached to the hard vertical surface. One disadvantage of these systems is that since they attach directly to the wall surface, a waterproof layer must be provided to eliminate the possibility of wall damage. Another disadvantage of these systems is that because the grow media is directly attached to a hard substrate or waterproof layer, they are limited with respect to configuration and applications on different types of surfaces, or different size surfaces.